A little later as he started for the campus old Jack Stehman joined him and said, in his sober, conscientious way, "Say, Dougal, you had no business saying what you did about Jimmy. Of course you didn't mean it, but you had better apologize, don't you think?" Davis said he did not look at it in that way, and changed the subject. Before he got to sleep that night he saw what a fool he had made of himself, and made up his mind to apologize to Linton before the whole table. But that was in the middle of the night. The next day there were guests at the club. The following day Linton dined out. The day after that Davis tried to make himself do it as they sat about the fireplace, but he postponed it until some time when his heart was not beating so loud, for he did not feel himself called upon to make a scene before the whole club. When he thought over what he meant to say it all seemed very ridiculous, and he blushed at the thought of it. Linton of all fellows would dislike any slopping over of this sort. So he changed his mind and decided to speak to Linton alone about it. But it was a very hard thing for a man like Davis to talk to a man like Linton about a thing like this. There was something about Linton that he did not understand. He was the one man that made him self-conscious. He always felt as though Linton saw through him and understood how ambitious he was, and was laughing at him for his strenuous struggling. He told himself that he did not propose to be in awe of a lazy dilettante who thought himself a clever reader of human nature. But that did not help him to apologize. And the longer he put it off the harder it became, naturally. And the longer he put it off the more he found to dislike in Linton, which was also natural, only you would not have thought this of Davis. After a while he began wondering how he had taken to Linton in the first place, and why the other fellows liked him so much. Every time they were together he began comparing himself with him. By most standards Davis ought to have been satisfied. Linton himself never seemed to think of comparison. He seemed to calmly take it for granted that Dougal was a wonderful man, and often referred to it as an acknowledged fact. He seemed to be glad to speak of it. But he had a way of making fellows love him that was galling to the man that led the class. All the college bowed down to Dougal Davis; not twenty under-classmen knew who Linton was. But Timberly and Reddy Armstrong and Jack Stehman had a way of throwing an arm about lazy Linton, whom they loved, that it did not occur to them to do with the wonderful Dougal Davis, whom they admired. Davis wanted that love. He wanted everything. You see he had quite a disposition to contend with.